[http://i3wm.org/ i3] is a dynamic [[Wikipedia:Tiling window manager|tiling window manager]]. i3 is very fast and powerful. To be most productive you will want to configure it to your liking. This guide will assist your i3 desktop customization. If you are accustomed to using a full Desktop Environment like Gnome, KDE, or Xfce this will greatly help to ease the transition to i3.

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[http://i3wm.org/ i3] is a dynamic [[Wikipedia:Tiling window manager|tiling window manager]]. i3 is very fast and powerful. To be most productive you will want to configure it to your liking. This guide will assist you in your i3 desktop customization. If you are accustomed to using a full Desktop Environment like Gnome, KDE, or Xfce this will greatly help to ease the transition to i3.

== Prerequisits ==

== Prerequisits ==

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=== Workspace Names ===

=== Workspace Names ===

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Although it is not required, many people prefer naming frequently used workspaces. First you need to determine which monitor you want the workspace to open to. Simply type {{ic|xrander}} into a terminal and it will show you the available display ports. Some common ones are LVDS1 for laptops or VGA1, HDMI1, HDMI2, etc for external monitors. If you are using [[Multihead#Xinerama|Xinerama]] instead use the outputs xinerama-0, xinerama-1, etc.

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Although it is not required, many people prefer naming frequently used workspaces. First you need to determine which monitor you want the workspace to open to. Simply type {{ic|xrander}} into a terminal and it will show you the available display ports. Some common ones are LVDS1 for laptops or VGA1, HDMI1, HDMI2, etc for external monitors. If you are using [[Multihead#Xinerama|Xinerama]] instead use the outputs xinerama-0, xinerama-1, etc. Add your workspace names to {{ic|~/.i3/config}} You also need to modify the corresponding lines to switch to your workspaces as well as moving focused containers to those workspaces.

# Workspace names

# Workspace names

Revision as of 17:31, 28 July 2013

i3 is a dynamic tiling window manager. i3 is very fast and powerful. To be most productive you will want to configure it to your liking. This guide will assist you in your i3 desktop customization. If you are accustomed to using a full Desktop Environment like Gnome, KDE, or Xfce this will greatly help to ease the transition to i3.

Configuration

i3statusbar

First we need to copy over the default configuration files that we will be working with to our home directory.

cp /etc/i3/config ~/.i3/config
cp /etc/i3status.conf ~/.i3status.conf

Network Interface Status

Now we can fix the status bar (i3status) at the bottom of the screen. If you recently installed Arch Linux then you will be using the new systemd/udev Predictable Network Interface Naming scheme. As a result we need to change the references for eth0 (ethernet) and wlan0 (wireless) to match your system. To view your available network interfaces use the command ip link

If the temperature column complains that it cannot get the temperature value then change the path line to:

path = "/sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp"

Volume Manager

To enable easy management of your system volume, you can install a volume manager applet such as pa-applet from the AUR. This should also allow you to use your keyboards volume up, volume down, and mute keys as well as using the applet directly to manage your volume. Once it is installed add the following line to your ~/.i3/config to auto start the applet:

exec /usr/bin/pa-applet

Network Manager

If you would like to use the Network Manager applet to manage your network connections you can install it with the command:

# pacman -S networkmanager network-manager-applet

To have the Network Manager daemon auto start at bootup use the command:

# systemctl enable NetworkManager

Note: If there are any other services managing your network interfaces (ie netctl) then you must disable them before starting Network Manager.

Finally add the the following line to your ~/.i3/config to automatically start the Network Manager applet in your system tray

exec /usr/bin/nm-applet

Workspace Names

Although it is not required, many people prefer naming frequently used workspaces. First you need to determine which monitor you want the workspace to open to. Simply type xrander into a terminal and it will show you the available display ports. Some common ones are LVDS1 for laptops or VGA1, HDMI1, HDMI2, etc for external monitors. If you are using Xinerama instead use the outputs xinerama-0, xinerama-1, etc. Add your workspace names to ~/.i3/config You also need to modify the corresponding lines to switch to your workspaces as well as moving focused containers to those workspaces.

Launching programs on specific workspaces

Desktop Wallpaper

To be able to manage the desktop wallpaper, you need a lightweight image viewer like Feh or Nitrogen. Install feh with the command # pacman -S feh. Then you can set your wallpaper with the following command:

$ feh --bg-scale /path/to/image.file

To have feh set your image to the Desktop Wallpaper add the following line to your ~/.i3/config